From the Carpenters’ best album, 1972’s 3x Platinum-certified A Song For You. They’d released, and would continue releasing, stellar singles as well as top-selling albums.
But A Song For You might be the one moment in their career when they were most successful on both counts. The album actually hangs together credibly as a cohesive pop rock album, and is chock full of hit singles.
For a minute, with A Song For You, the Carpenters became the cool kids–by recording songs written by the cool kids: Leon Russell. Carole King, Roger Nichols and Paul Williams–all hot writers at the time.
“Goodbye to Love” is considered a forerunner of the pop power ballad. Its fuzz guitar solo/coda combination was both groundbreaking and controversial.
Had it graced, say, a Wings song it would have been called a great rock guitar solo. But because it appeared in a Carpenters tune it will never be recognized as such.
Wikipedia tells the song’s story thusly:
Background
While visiting London, Richard Carpenter watched a 1940 Bing Crosby film on The Late Movie called Rhythm on the River. The Carpenters noticed that the characters kept referring to the struggling songwriter’s greatest composition, “Goodbye to Love”. Carpenter said, “You never hear it in the movie, they just keep referring to it”, and he thought it was a good title for a song. He immediately envisioned the tune and lyrics, starting with:I’ll say goodbye to love.No one ever cared if I should live or die.Time and time again, the chance forLove has passed me by…
He said that while the melody in his head kept going, the lyrics stopped “because I’m not a lyricist”. He completed the rest of his arrangement upon his return to the United States, while his writing partner John Bettis completed the rest of the lyrics.
While the Carpenters were working on the song, they decided that a fuzz guitar solo should be included. Karen Carpenter called guitarist Tony Peluso and asked him to play on the record. Tony remembers: “At first I didn’t believe that it was actually Karen Carpenter on the phone but she repeated her name again. … It was at this point that I realized it was really her and that I was speaking to one of my idols.” She told him that she and Richard were working on a song called “Goodbye to Love”, that they were familiar with Tony’s work with a band called Instant Joy, and that he would be perfect for the sound they were looking for. Peluso first played something soft and sweet, but then Richard Carpenter said:
“No, no, no! Play the melody for five bars and then burn it up! Soar off into the stratosphere! Go ahead! It’ll be great!”
John Bettis has said that Richard Carpenter kept calling him, raving about the guitar solo. He was wondering why Richard was going on about the solo until he heard it. The lyricist said he cried when he first heard the song because he had never heard an electric guitar sound like that. He said Tony Peluso “had a certain almost cello sounding guitar growl that worked against the wonderful melancholia of that song”. He went on to say the “way it growls at you, especially at the end” was unbelievable.
Release and reception
The finished product was released on June 19, 1972, and reached No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100. It also became Carpenters’ seventh top ten single in the Billboard Hot 100. It was the first song written by the songwriting team of Carpenter/Bettis to reach the US top ten. The Carpenters received hate mail (claiming that the Carpenters had sold out and gone hard rock) because of Richard’s idea for a fuzz guitar solo in a love ballad.
